Longtime W. Chester jeweler Webb prepares to close

Gael Czartowski with one of her cats on a display case at Webb’s Jewelry Store in West Chester on Thursday, April 25, 2013. The store is closing after 143 years, Czartowski has owned it since 1995. Staff Photo By Vinny Tennis

A borough fixture since 1870, the venerable jewelry store will close May 31 when owner Gael Czartowski retires.

“It’s been a tough four years,” the 70-year-old Czartowski acknowledged during an interview last week. “Originally, I was going to sell the business but retail is a hard sell right now.”

The Webb family owned the business for 102 years, which moved around in the borough until settling in the unit block of West Gay Street.

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Several years ago, the store moved to smaller quarters one block west on Gay.

Jesse Crouse and Carol Crouse Eason, great-grandchildren of company founder Jesse Embree Webb, sold Webb’s in 1973 to Bash Jewelers, another family-owned enterprise based in York, Jesse Crouse recalled.

Owner of a Chester County heating and cooling business, he still shops at Webb’s for his wife and is sad to see the store close, he said.

Michael Rapport bought the business from the Bash family in 1978, and hired Czartowski to keep the books in 1984.

She then bought Webb in 1995.

Czartowski lives in East Goshen with husband Anthony, a retired Chester County probation officer, and a menagerie of cats and kittens.

Some she owns and others she fosters and places with new owners through word of mouth, the Internet and other sources.

Several of the felines she cares for now keep her company at the store. Apologizing to a recent visitor, she remarked, laughing, “My kittens are not behaving well today.”

As a result of her work in what she called “Webb’s back room,” Czartowski said from the get-go that she knew the jewelry business “from the inside out. Every woman knows jewelry, but it’s the back end that supports the business and runs it.”

When she bought Webb’s from Rapport 18 years ago, “It was the sales end I needed to learn.”

Fortunately, she said, “That came naturally.”

Times and taste have changed over the years. Whereas Webb Jewelers once sold sterling silver serving pieces, ornate tea sets and Hummel figurines, “We stopped ordering them in the mid-1990s.”

When Czartowski first bought the business, “We sold lots of sterling silver jewelry. And white gold, which looks like silver, came in during the early 1990s when many people developed allergies to the alloy, usually nickel, that is a component of silver.”

She ceased selling sterling silver jewelry in 2005 and concentrated on pearls, gold, platinum, diamonds and other precious and semi-precious stones.

But gold itself is a tough sell these days, given that it has recently hit an all-time high in price. Instead, “people are wearing hubcaps on their ears,” Czartowski said, referring to jewelry now made from stainless steel, copper, bronze, titanium and other base metals.

Czartowski isn’t a fan. “These metals don’t have value; you can’t scrap them. But you can get value for gold, silver and platinum.”

Real estate developer Brian McFadden owns the building where Webb is now. In 2009, she sold the building where Webb was located for 98 years.

She doesn’t stock as much jewelry as she once did and concentrates instead on special orders and repairs.

At one point, she stocked a small number of diamonds but changed to getting them on “memo,” which means finding out what a customer wants and then bringing in loose stones for approval.

“No matter what I had in stock,” she said, “People always wanted something else. You can’t afford to stock all the things that people want today.”

She sees differences in the buying habits of 20-somethings and the 50-plus crowd: “Younger people are going for contemporary metals and older people still want precious stones.”

The notion of retiring both scares and excites Czartowski.

“I’m not ready to give up the horse yet,” she said, adding wistfully that she’ll miss her customers and the part that the store played in engagements, weddings, anniversaries and other special occasions.

Her favorite story involves a young couple about a decade ago who bought an engagement ring and wedding bands from her and then asked her, separately, to inscribe them. Each fervently wanted the inscription to be a surprise to the other.

And yet, remembered Czartowski, “They each chose the exact same Gaelic saying.”